The
Center's research team, led by professor of law, Jon Cannon,
has selected six Superfund sites for in-depth study. They
are: Central Chemical, in Hagerstown, MD; Gilt Edge Mine in
Leed, S.D.; Emmell's Septic Landfill in Galloway Township,
N. J.; Barber Orchard, a former apple orchard, now being used
for residential development in Waynesville N.C., a Naval Amphibious
Base at Little Creek, in Virginia Beach, VA; and a cluster
of three sites in West Virginia: Big John Salvage, Sharon
Steel Corp and Ordnance Works Disposal Area. These sites were
chosen in part because they are situated in a variety of contexts,
ranging from rural to urban. The contaminants present and
the physical landscapes also vary widely from site to site,
giving investigators an indication of the scope of issues
that can arise at the 1,235 priority Superfund sites throughout
the country.

Beginning
in the spring of 2002, faculty investigators and student researchers
visited the sites, and their surrounding areas, gathering
information, interviewing EPA officials, and talking with
community stakeholders. Their efforts resulted in a set of
working reports, which serve as a foundation for further research.

In
this second year of the Center's funding investigators have
conceptualized and begun work on several research projects
at some of the case-study sites. They are also creating an
optimization model that will integrate the faculty members'
research and make it applicable to redevelopment decisions
at Superfund sites across the country.

PROJECTS

Specifically,
Environmental Science professor Janet Herman, will be working
with Engineering professors Rosanna Neupauer and Teresa Culver
on developing methods for quantifying uncertainty in contaminant
transport and remediation and creating a model of groundwater
flow and solute transport for the landfill site in New Jersey.
Landscape Architecture professor Julie Bargmann and her colleague
Dan Bluestone, from the Architectural History Department are
teaching two interdisciplinary courses this year linked directly
to the Central Chemical site in Hagerstown, Maryland. Their
studio course in the spring of 2003 will result in the creation
of design alternatives for the site.

Director
of the Institute for Environmental Negotiation, Frank Dukes
is working on a Best Practices Guide for collaborative decisionmaking
at Superfund sites and designing a debriefing session involving
all the Center's faculty for one of the selected sites. Bruce
Dotson is developing a Best Practices report on community
planning for Superfund site reuse. Commerce School professors,
George Overstreet and Mark White have teamed up with Peter
Beling and Jim Lambert, on the Systems and Engineering
faculty to develop the multi-objective optimization model
to provide decisionmakers with the tools to optimize Superfund
site reuse. The model will also serve as a framework for integrating
all facets of the Center's work. The Center's director, Jonathan
Cannon, professor of law, has produced an analysis of site
optimization and its temporal component--adaptive management-within
the legal and policy framework of the Superfund program. He
is refining that analysis in a way that will provide a synthesis
of the Center's work.

EPA
AWARD

The
initial $200,000 under the cooperative agreement with EPA
covered the first year of the Center's establishment and operation,
including faculty and graduate student research stipends.
EPA has already awarded the Center a second year of funding
at $200,000 and Professor Cannon anticipates a possible third
year of EPA funding for the Center as well. The cooperative
agreement is a cost-sharing arrangement in which the University
of Virginia has agreed to cover the cost of administrative
support for each year that the Center is funded.

Recently three additional faculty members have joined the Center team. They
are: Assistant professor in the department of Systems and Information Engineering,
Jim Lambert; Teresa
Culver, professor of Civil Engineering; professor of Architectural
History and director of the Preservation Program Dan
Bluestone.

PARTICIPATING
SCHOOLS

EPA's
awarding of this grant to the University recognizes that Virginia
is uniquely suited as an academic institution to help advance
the Superfund Redevelopment Initiative. University faculty
members currently teach undergraduate and graduate course
and conduct research in environmental sciences, policy, business
and law. The Environmental Sciences Department is a multi-disciplinary
program frequently cited as a model department in national
reviews, in which faculty conduct research into the hydrological,
geochemical, and ecological phenomena of surface and ground
water. The department manages several long-term interdisciplinary
field projects, including the National Sciences Foundation-funded
Long-Term Ecological Research station at the Virginia Coastal
Reserve. Other major research initiatives range from non-point
source pollution in Virginia watersheds to the impact of forest
growth on the global climate. Over the past five years, Environmental
Sciences faculty have received over $2 million in funding
from EPA, principally to support scientific research.

In
1997, the School of Engineering and Applied Science identified
environmental engineering and management as a major thrust
area. The Departments of Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering,
and Systems Engineering include faculty with expertise in
environmentally-responsible chemical manufacturing, in computationally
intensive ground water remediation modeling, in active and
passive remediation design, and in risk analysis. In the School
of Architecture, faculty research typically links architecture,
landscape architecture, urban planning, and architectural
history, and the curriculum includes several courses on sustainable
design. The Institute for Environmental Negotiation has pioneered
the development of alternative processes for resolving differences
among "stakeholders" in a wide range of cases and
jurisdictions.

The
Center's initial focus will concern several main project areas:
Integration of science, engineering and economics; site visualization
and design; managing liability; community processes; and tool
development and information dissemination. "Although
each of these areas is a separate project," Professor
Cannon explains, "linkages between them will help achieve
the Center's overall objective to develop a fully integrated
framework that will facilitate bringing contaminated sites
back into productive, healthy use in local and regional communities."